Poker Chips

I am not sure if this will encourage gambling, bartering and bargaining but I am trying everything out.

I have created a store in the guest room to sell my children their things back. If they leave them lying around, fight over them, or dont take care of them they go into the store. I used to have the 'toy jail' and they would earn it back but this fizzled - was too hard. I pick up so much of their crap that I also started to just throw things away which would then create another internal battle for myself. I have thoughtfully shopped for or they have received most of these things as gifts and I cant just throw them away, so I would put them into bins and then just rotate the toys. Well this didnt necessarily teach them anything and actually most of the time they never knew it was gone. Now, that tells you something right there - TOO MANY TOYS!

Well, I come from a long line of toy lovers. I remember my Grandmother used to take us to PlayVille in Mandeville and she always said she wanted to buy the place. Well, it is still there and when I pass it I always wish she had. I can never pass by those hometown toy stores, they always have the good stuff. Let me just clarify though that $30 is too much for a Jack in the Box! And the Back to Basics Toy Catalog is like reading People Magazine to me - relaxing and nostalgic!

Oh, back to the point here. For everything nice they do, and I mean everything, I give them a blue or green chip. Saying yes ma'am, please, thank you, sharing, eating, playing nice, even smiling on the car ride to school or thinking about doing something nice. For anything mean I give a red chip which takes away 2 blue chips. I take their stuff away, put it in the room and almost every day they get to 'shop' for their stuff. Now the older one has figured out the bargaining thing b/c she ends up with a lot fewer chips. 'If I buy this with one chip can I have the accessories and house and car that go with it for just one more chip?' Actually, the very first trip to the store she ended up with no chips b/c her red outweighed her blue. This was devastating but I had to stick to my guns and let her watch the younger one shop to her hearts content. What was awesome was that halo gave horns some of her chips b/c she felt so bad AND she couldnt even spend them all.

Sorry, let me elaborate on that one - we endearingly call the 2 older girls horns and halo b/c one is the spawn of satin sometimes and the other is a cherub angel about to sprout wings. So naturally horns gets a lot more red chips than halo does. EVERY time! And on Christmas morning Halo is the one to open a gift and play with it and not really care that there are 20 more to open. Horns wants to tear through as many as she can as fast as possible.

So each time we go up there Halo cant even spend all of her tokens b/c she already has enough to satisfy herself. I even started bundling stuff so they could get more for the money. Like 4 books per chip or a whole box of dolls is one chip but no, she just wants the one. "Is that OK" she asks in her sweet high pitched Shirley Temple voice. Meanwhile Horns is waiting outside the door with her brass knuckels ready to hijack her winnings. Just kidding......she doesnt have brass knuckles.

If we can get anything out of it hopefully the reward/consequence will set in. Horns has actually figured out how to buy things that belong to Halo. Tricky little bugger.